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Cambridge Researchers Present Lithium-Air Battery Breakthrough (google.com)
Reuters reports on a tantalizing advance in battery technology described this week by Cambridge researchers, who have made large enough steps toward a practical lithium-oxygen battery to give a laboratory demo of their system. Commercially available lithium-oxygen batteries would be significant because they would
have the potential to deliver the desired power thanks to a high energy density - a measure of energy stored for a given weight - that could be 10 times that of lithium-ion batteries and approach that of gasoline. They also could be a fifth the cost and a fifth the weight of lithium-ion batteries. But problems have beset lithium-oxygen batteries that affect their capacity and lifetime, including troublesome efficiency, performance, chemical reaction and potential safety issues and the limitation of needing pure oxygen rather than plain old air. The Cambridge demonstrator battery employs different chemistry than previous work on lithium-air batteries, for example using lithium hydroxide rather than lithium peroxide. It also uses an electrode made of graphene, a form of carbon. The result was a more stable and efficient battery."
Some more about this research can be gleaned from Clare Grey's web page at Cambridge.
I wish I had an actual breakthrough battery for every battery breakthrough story I've seen on Slashdot for the last ten years...
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
I sometimes get the feeling that graphene is like the discovery of semiconductors (or possibly of semiconductor doping). It's got revolutionary applications, making the formerly impossible (or at least impractical) practical, and the formerly expensive affordable. On the other hand, at this point in its lifetime it gets used far more in the research lab than in the manufacturing plant, and for all the times it appears in the scientific literature it is slow (or at least, it feels slow) to appear in consumer products. I suspect it will get there, and become ubiquitous, though. Once a "killer application" of the material is discovered - something that is sufficiently economically valuable that development teams will throw huge resources behind it and a new area of competition across multiple consumer product R&D teams arises - it will produce a change - probably the next big change in electronics. Think about how lithium-ion batteries revolutionized portable electronics and miniature aircraft (and are in the process of revolutionizing electric cars).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Name 2 mentioned in the past as breakthroughs, game changers
10x the energy density!
1/5 the cost
1/5 the weight.
I mean, why do reports write these stories when they would never write the same story about any other tech with the phantom results?
Tesla needs 1,200 amps+ *today* Liion can deliver that *TODAY*... in a package that's not too crazy. This is what matters, usable battery tech in a real world application. Let's start having scientists write these breakthrough stories. The only time I see scientists use words like the ones in the article are when they are trying to get grant funding. They aren't even worth clicking through to anymore...
If you didn't have the memory of a goldfish you would have noticed that only a few of the many battery improvements written about ten years ago have made it to market at all.
There, FTFY.
The road from lab to product is long and full of speed bumps (or rather: unexpected craters in the road). If you look at actually available products, battery tech is a steadily improving but SLOW moving market. A good analogy is open source software: on a regular basis there's important releases (that actually bring something new to the table), and the occasional surprise. But overall, it's a very gradually evolving ecosystem.
If you didn't have the memory of a goldfish you would have noticed that the battery improvements written about ten years ago have gotten out on market now.
Hey, quit carping about my memory!
These last few years open source software seems to be taking several seconds backwards. At one time the goal was world domination, now it's apparently windows emulation.
In particular there have been some improvements along those lines recently. Likewise just last year new batteries with silicon electrodes increased energy density over anything seen before, and smartphone manufacturers are already using them for their newest toys.
There has been no revolution in batteries, no completely new chemistry that changes everything, but there has been steady development.
I'd get ecstatic about a 2X breakthrough. That would be fucking fantastic.
Lithium batteries have more than doubled in energy density over that period, while dropping in price.
If all the advances which were announced had played out as announced though they would probably have increased by a hundredfold or more. It's interesting to hear about the advances I just wish that they were not over hyped to the point where they make grossly inaccurate claims about their impact. Perhaps this will improve battery energy densities by a factor of 10 as claimed but, lacking expert understanding of batteries on which to base my own opinion, I tend to put more weight on the previous record of similar claims from battery researchers which suggests that a 10% improvement might be nearer the mark assuming it ever becomes practical to implement outside a research lab.
Care to cite anything to support your claim?
Damn, steps not seconds. Argh!
If you didn't have the memory of a goldfish you would have noticed that only a few of the many battery improvements written about ten years ago have made it to market at all.
Let me guess - you hate EV's. Friends and I have a wager about the EV denialist's last reason that they are an "utter failure".
My money is on the color they are painted.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It's impossible to make a battery close to the energy density of gasoline. We're talking a thousandfold increase, not 10x.
The Energy density of gasoline is 32 MJ/L. The energy density of the best batteries is about 4 MJ/L. That is 8-fold less, not 1000.
But a gasoline engine is about 15% efficient, while an electric engine is about 90% efficient. So even if the energy density of a battery is 1/6th that of gasoline, it will give you the same range.
Sure, but what matters is the performance of *systems*; and if you set aside battery one one hand and gas tank on the other, an electric powertrain is much, much lighter than a gasoline powertrain. If you got a 10x increase in energy to weight in battery technology, that'd come right off what is by far the electric car's heaviest component. The result would be dramatic improvements in the car's performance and efficiency.
If it also comes with the kind of cost reductions they're imagining, you could be talking about a car about the size and cost of a Nissan Leaf but with a 500 mile range and about 10% lighter.
However I'm not holding my breath. The air breathing battery technology idea isn't new; the problem is longevity. These guys have some ideas for improving that, but it remains to be seen whether those'll lead to a practical vehicle battery with the kind of performance they're hoping for.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Close ... meanwhile gasoline engines are around 20% efficiency (not for the 20 - 30l per 100km racing SUV, though) and electric engines are in the 98% - 99%,efficiency range since over 100 years.
Does not change your argument, though.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Any government subsidies to the electric car industry pale in comparison to those of the petroleum industry. Not to mention the ICE auto manufacturers who DID go bankrupt, and were already bailed out by the government. Do you have any citation for Tesla about to go bankrupt?
It's like every other fake outrage for the self righteous, like BENGHAZI! where the hypocrtites get outraged over something that when they do it - its different, and its just fine.
You hate electrical cars? - the subsides for them are socialist, communist, atheist, gay marriage enabling hogwash, and the road to perfidy. You like your GMC Savana 3500? Then Oil subsidies are magically turned into laissez faire capitalism, and blessed by the invisible hand of the free market - Just like it says in the old Testament.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
OK, correct me if I'm wrong here, but. . . Won't a lithium-air battery (or an aluminum-air battery, which is also discussed from time to time) actually increase in mass as it discharges? It's pulling oxygen from the air and then binding it into oxides which then have to be carried around until the battery is recharged, right?
Wrong the energy density of gasoline/petrol is 46.4 MJ/kg. The energy density of aluminium is 31.0MJ/kg and lithium is 43.1MJ/kg. So theoretically both aluminium air and lithium air batteries would have a comparable energy density to gasoline/petrol.
When you figure that internal combustion engines are like ~20% efficient and decent electric motors are over 95% efficient you would understand that you don't actually need to get the same energy density from a battery as you do from liquid hydrocarbons.
No, I am not spinning some dark conspiracy theory about Big Oil. Simply this, if it had not been grandfathered out of product liability laws and hazardous substances regulation, gasoline and diesel will not be approved for use as automobile fuel. All other hydro carbons with the same energy density (42 MJ/Kg), volatility and flammability are strictly regulated.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Oh yeah, what happened to the company that made that nanoparticle-based iron phosphate cathode battery? Right, they went belly-up, probably because while their chemistry is safer, standard lithium cobalt cells still win for energy density.
Actually this is far better (from what I can see of it) than any of the previous work on li-air, which I've always taken a rather long view on. While it's really unfortunate I can't read the paper to see the exact details to get an idea of the manufacturing process and read more about the nature of the testing and the drawbacks mentioned, getting 93% efficiency and 2000 cycles on lithium-air are really staggering figures.
The only drawbacks the article mentions are "because the battery's ability to charge and discharge is too low." Soooooo... does that mean low power density? If so, to that I say so what? Today's li-ion cells have way more power density than is needed for propulsion, that's why you have things like Teslas beating supercars - their peak power is something like 20 times what they need to cruise at highway speeds. You could drop discharge power density by an order of magnitude and still have a fine car (optionally with a supercapacitor or small high power-density li-ion pack for bursts if desired) . And for recharge power density... when you have the absurd energy densities provided by li-air, it ceases to matter any more. Seriously, when you can drive all day on a single charge, who needs rapid chargers? You just plug in and charge while you sleep, so it makes no difference whether you can do it in 30 minutes or 8 hours. The top end of Level 2 charging should be enough to give a reasonably efficient vehicle a whole day's drive, no need for Level 3+.
I'd gladly take way lower power density in exchange for way higher energy density.
From the paper's abstract, I see that the chemicals involved in the battery are LiO2, graphene oxide, LiI and dimethoxyethane. LiO2 is cheap. Graphene oxides vary quite a bit depending on the preparation method, so it depends on what varient she's using, but most are cheap. Lithium iodide is cheap. Dimethoxyethane is cheap. Seriously, unless she's using an unusual rare/expensive form of graphene oxide, or is doing something weird and potentially costly in the manufacturing process, these should be affordable.
I really wish I could read more about the details, as that's where the devil lives, but... damned restricted access, yadda yadda yadda. :P
"Oh, goodness. Look at my wrist, I have to go." "But what about your clothes?" "I don't love these."
In case you didn't notice, batteries have dramatically increased in energy density over time. No, a cell phone is not entirely a battery, but battery sizes have shrunk in conjunction with phone sizes, even while their capacity (mAh) has been rising (significantly) over time.
People's inability to notice changing technology around them never ceases to amaze me. It's astounding how fast people get used to new technology and forget what old technology used to be like. It's like picking up an old video game that you played as a teenager and being shocked at how bad the graphics were.
"Oh, goodness. Look at my wrist, I have to go." "But what about your clothes?" "I don't love these."
Most research doesn't pan out. Not in batteries, or in any other area of scientific endeavour.
I don't know where you got that from but it simply isn't true. In my own field of particle physics it is extremely rare that an experiment does not work. It's true that some experiments work better than others and an experiment might not find new and exciting physics but in that case you learn that your existing laws of physics work under conditions where nobody had ever tested them before.
Mind you we also don't go around telling people that our next experiment will find an easy way to convert matter to anti-matter and solve the entire world's energy needs either. It's not impossible that some experiment might find a way to do that if the physics we don't know turns out to allow it but there is no reason to think that's a likely outcome so we don't say it.
That doesn't mean we should stop doing science. It also doesn't mean that we should stop reporting on science.
Are you sure that you read the post I wrote? Not once did I even hint at either of those things. All I ask for is honest and accurate reporting of science and not the usual hyped up "you won't believe how good the new battery technology is" type of crap because I really won't believe it anymore. I'm all for science reporting but stick to the facts, i.e. the science, and not wild speculation about a science-fiction future which is sadly more and more of what we see on Slashdot.
Aka graphite oxide. It's made from graphite, and has been around for over a century. It's considered the most promising candidate for producing affordable graphene (most of the other techniques for making graphene do so in rather small volumes at rather high cost), but tends to produce the lowest quality graphene. So it's really promising to see that this is the raw material that the graphene electrode is sourced from.
"Oh, goodness. Look at my wrist, I have to go." "But what about your clothes?" "I don't love these."
they say goldfish got no memory
i guess their lives are much like mine
the little plastic castle
is a surprise every time
it's hard to say if they are happy
when they don't seem much to mind
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Using spare parts, super glue, duct tape, and a hammer, my parents built me from spare parts in the year of our Flying Spaghetti Monster Nineteen Hundred and Fifty Seven. Often times, I look back at the myriad changes in technology and marvel. So much seemed so trivial at inception yet has resulted in great and dynamic changes. From storage, to compute power, to speed, to communication, and even to input methods - it has been a grand change and a most wonderful show.
Like yourself, I too ponder the lack of reflection and appreciation, and don't I understand why there's so little notice of it. Marvel, that's the word. It has been a beautiful time to be alive. I wonder, how many generations passed before the discovery of fire was no longer seen as a game changing innovation.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Is that how it works now? If you don't agree or like something that others do, then you are a denialist?
Not disagreement, Denial. Denial is refusing to accept basic laws of physics. DEnial is believing that th eCO2 that humans put in the atmosphere has no effect, and willful ignorance of the fact that the CO2 greenhouse effect had better exist, or we wouldn't exist, and if it didn't, what is keeping the world warm enough to support life? Denial is believing that vaccines cause autism, long after it has been proven that the esearch was faulty, actually fraudulent, and done by a researcher, now disgraced and in conjunction with a lawyer in a moneymaking scheme, and after the smoking gun of the preservative "cause" of the autism has been removed with no difference and that all the denialists have done was destroyed herd immunity and killed some of their children. Denial is to believe that the world was created in October 4004 b.c.e long after the laws of physics have shown that it takes weird imaginary things like the speed of light being variable, and other kooky physics nonsense.
And denial is that Electrical vehicles are a failure as more manufacturers are bringing them out, that they are achieving greater range, and that people are buzzing around in them quite happily, and love their EV cars. And denial is using decade old metrics to convince yourself of that.
Regular disagreements that don't involve willful ignoring of facts? Not denial at all, but a difference of opinion.
Fuck you.
You'd never go back to sheep then.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.